I awoke in front of the fire. 

 

Something about the crackling of wood or the wavering heat must have stirred me from my sleep. I had been laying down, so I pushed myself up, my hands running along thin grooves in the wood floor as I did. The floor near the fire was comfortably warm, a welcome sensation to my frigid hands. 

 

I looked around. The only source of light in the cabin was the fire I had been sleeping in front of, painting the bare log walls with a warm, red light. There were some corners the light didn’t reach. In those spots, the inky darkness wavered, claiming more or less area as the fire warming my face flickered. 

 

There was a table with a few dishes and utensils and a single chair in one corner and a painting with a smashed glass frame hung on the wall to my right. Behind me was the cabin’s door, held closed by nailed-in boards of wood and rusted metal chains. 

 

I stood up. I was wearing thick flannel clothing. I walked, legs tired and sore, to the only window in the cabin on the same wall where the table was set. It was dark outside, but delicate flakes of snow were barely visible just past the glass, illuminated by the soft light of the fire. The light provided the illusion that the falling snowflakes were made of gold. 

 

I took in my surroundings once more, touching the fine wood surfaces but avoiding the patches of darkness the light didn’t reach. It was then that I truly processed that my surroundings were new to me. I was unfamiliar with the fire and the cooking pot lying beside it, unfamiliar with the table and door and the flickering darkness that lurked in the cabin’s corners. I was unfamiliar with myself. Why I was here, how long I’d been here, who I was—all of those questions I had no answer to. 

 

A sudden wave of exhaustion consumed me and the spot by the fire beckoned. I found a hand-knitted blanket in the corner of the room, barely illuminated by the fire, wrapped myself in it, and lay down. 

 

As I drifted off to sleep, I remember seeing a faint glimpse of a flashing white light through the window, irregular in its tempo and undoubtedly alive. 

 

#  #  #

 

The snow had stopped by the following morning, but clouds still coated the sky. It was still mostly dark, even though I was fully awake—it had to be winter. An enticing smell came from the cooking pot by the now-extinguished fire. I looked into the cooking pot to see it full of apparently untouched soup. It appeared to be the only food in the room, and it both looked and smelled fresh, so after reigniting the fire with some fresh wood and a flint and steel and reheating the soup, I grabbed the utensils on the table and dug in. While I didn’t know who I was or what my favorite foods were, I liked the soup—the broth seemed to have been made primarily with some kind of meat, but I couldn’t place what kind of meat it was. 

 

I occupied myself with a small bookshelf underneath the smashed painting. It seemed to be filled only with old, classic English literature, each book bound with worn leather and made of yellowed paper. I found Isaac Asimov’s Foundation among the bunch and began to read. 

 

The light outside slowly grew brighter, then darker again. The day passed before I knew it, and I stared out the window of the cabin as the blanketed sky obscured the setting sun. As daylight faded, my curiosity grew until, by the time the window was nothing but a velvety black landscape covered by a shiny white carpet, I couldn’t resist the idea of going outside into the cold. I had had enough of the cabin—I wanted to explore, find an answer to one of my bottomless questions. 

 

I lit the fire for a source of light, grabbed the thick flannel coat hung by the boarded-up door and put it on, sizing up the nails and chains. Despite the fact that the boards had been nailed in from the inside, I couldn’t find a hammer anywhere in the cabin. I barely fit my short fingernails behind the boards and tugged with all my might, but I was more thin and fatigued than I thought I was. 

 

I grabbed a spoon from the table and wedged it behind one of the boards, using it like a lever to widen the gap between the board and the door. At last, the first board popped out and clattered loudly on the floor, and after taking a momentary rest for my muscles, I got to work on the rest of the boards. 

 

One by one, they fell to the floor, until all that was left was a door that opened into the cabin and a rusted chain blocking its way. I picked up a long wooden board from the ground and lifted it into the air, swinging it down upon the chain with all my might. 

 

The chain broke with a loud snap. With a shaking hand, I reached for the doorknob, twisted it, and pulled. 

 

The freezing air struck me in the face, sending a chill down my spine. Gritting my teeth, I stepped into the ankle-deep snow, feeling it crunch beneath my feet, and left the sanctuary of the cabin, shutting the door behind me. 

 

Directly to my right was a large stump with a snow-covered ax embedded in its top. I grabbed the ax and held it in my hand, brushing off the snow. It was heavy, heavier than I expected, and I set it by the door to bring inside later. 

 

To my left, about a dozen feet from the cabin, was a strange metallic structure. It was slightly shorter than me and seemed to be the only thing in sight without a coat of snow on it. The structure consisted of two thin, shiny, vertical metallic poles connected at the tips by another shorter horizontal pole. At the center of the horizontal pole was a complicated, darkly-colored object with a dimly-blinking light at its center. I couldn’t decipher the blinking object’s purpose for the life of me, but another similar but slightly smaller object dangled off of the first on a wire, swaying gently in the wind in the center of the strange metallic structure. 

 

I approached the structure to feel a surprising warmth emanating off of it. The snow was melted at the structure’s base, and it seemed as if the structure had been built directly into the ground. Sensing it was important, I didn’t dare disturb the flimsy-looking structure, but I watched with curiosity as the unknown device dangled in the structure’s center, a blue light blinking softly at a predetermined pace. 

 

Trees surrounded most of the cabin, which, from the outside, was much larger than just the room I had known. There seemed to be other rooms, even a second floor, but I had seen no signs of them from inside the room with the campfire. A small clearing in the thick forest revealed a dark empty sky, the blackness of the clouds obscuring any faraway view I might have been able to make out otherwise. 

 

I began by venturing into the forest behind the cabin. The trees were tall, thick, and dark, not enough light penetrating the forest for me to make out the top of each tree. I felt a bizarre presence from each evergreen as I walked past it, almost as if it was listening to the crunch of the snow under my feet. 

 

I walked further and further into the darkness, hoping to find the gentle light of another fireplace in someone else’s cabin. Hoping for anything. My wish was eventually granted, but not in a way that I expected it to be. 

 

At first I didn’t notice it, but there was a faint pulsing of white light coming from behind the trees ahead of me. The pace of the pulse was irregular, rising and falling in frequency like breathing. The light slowly grew brighter even after I stopped my approach, moving towards me from the trees ahead. I could only make out its presence from the silhouettes it created behind the trees. 

 

I took a step backwards. I was deeply curious, but my heart was racing. The potent acid of fear burned through my veins with every beat, forcing my retreat. Some part of me didn’t want to see what was causing the blinking. 

 

I started at a walk, then my walk became a run. I didn’t dare look behind me. The pulsing white light was now bright enough to illuminate the trees in front of me. I sprinted through the woods, the snow grabbing onto and slowing my boots with every step I took. 

 

Eventually, the cabin came back into view. The pulsing light reflected brightly off of the side of the cabin closest to us, and a blacked-out window displayed a reflection of the light’s source, but it was so bright all I could make out was a glare. As I sprinted back towards the front of the cabin, I passed by the thin metal structure, which was vibrating intensely and emitting a soft, high-pitched whine, its lights glowing brighter than ever. I flung open the cabin door as a low-pitched vibration rang out behind me from the source of the flashing light, and then slammed it shut behind me. I turned the lock, stepped back, and watched the light seeping through the crack under the door warily as I silently prayed for my life. 

 

As the flashing light grew slowly dimmer and dimmer, I realized why the cabin had been so thoroughly locked. Out there, beyond its walls, were things not meant to be known.